The best longform journalism we consumed this week

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The California Mom at the Center of Trump’s Crackdown on School Gender Policies

The Trump administration is abusing an obscure privacy law to try to force schools to disclose whenever educators respect a student's preferred name and pronouns. Since there's no harm being done to the student when their preferences are followed, the Trump administration is simply engaging in abject cruelty under the guise of protecting parents' rights. [The 74]

Snake Venom, Urine, and a Quest to Live Forever: Inside a Biohacking Conference Emboldened by MAHA

We have truly entered a new age of medical pseudoscience. Under the tech-friendly banner of "biohacking," an entire movement is sidestepping — and often outright rejecting — peer-reviewed science while making fantastical claims about curative and life-lengthening treatments. It's reminiscent of the late 1800s, when every city billboard was plastered with advertisements for tonics that cured all diseases. The snake oil salesman has been reborn. [Wired]

DraftGPT: The Brave New World of AI Hits the NBA

Billy Bean arguably launched the "moneyball" era of sports, where teams began leaning more on data and statistics to guide their player recruitment. The current explosion in AI tech is now leading some data scientists to believe they can make predictions that are even more accurate by leveraging ever larger reams of information — including the transcripts of post-game interviews the players conduct with the news media. [The Ringer]

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The Potential and Perils of AI for Conservation

All around the world, scientists have set up nature cameras to monitor local animal populations, but this has created more video and audio footage than they could ever hope to effectively analyze. If there's one thing AI is good at, though, it's combing through enormous data sets to find a needle in a haystack, and conservationists are increasingly leveraging the technology to monitor animal species that are typically difficult to track in the wild, either because they're constantly moving or only come out at night. [Biographic]

How I Learned to Become an Intimacy Coördinator

Up until about a decade ago, coordinating sex scenes in film and television was left almost entirely up to the directors and participating actors, but now it's the norm for "intimacy coordinators" to be consulted at every step of the process. Given the relative newness of the role, Hollywood is still grappling without how to train and certify these workers, and plenty of actors still resist engaging with them. [New Yorker]

My other newsletter: This YouTuber amassed a half million social media followers by interviewing touring musicians

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